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Bush energy advisers go to Romney

The former Bush officials said they don’t have official roles in the Romney campaign. | AP Photos
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Romney’s competitors appear to be taking different approaches when it comes to working with energy and environmental experts.

Perry’s Texas-dominated operation knows the nuances of the oil and gas industry. “He’s got access to guys I’m sure in Texas who know at least as much as anybody else in D.C. It’s just a different kind of experience,” McKenna said. “I don’t think he’s underserved, let’s put it that way.”

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One of Perry’s closest advisers on these issues is Barry Smitherman, his appointee to the Railroad Commission of Texas and a former member of the state Public Utility Commission. A former public finance investment banker, Smitherman also has been picked by the Bush and Obama administrations to sit on the Energy Department’s Electricity Advisory Committee.

On the official Perry campaign, Deirdre Delisi, a former chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, serves as policy and strategy director. He has also named Emily Domenech as an adviser on defense, energy and environmental issues. Domenech most recently did advance work for then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates. She also held a similar post in 2006 and 2007 for then-Energy Secretary Sam Bodman.

Perry’s economic team also got help from Susan Dudley, a Bush-era director of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. But Dudley, now director of the Regulatory Studies Center at The George Washington University, said she’s just playing the field with all Democratic and GOP lawmakers.

“I am an academic and try to help them understand both how the current regulatory process works and what consequences possible reforms might have,” she wrote in an email to POLITICO.

Perry’s staff, she added, “was interested in thinking through these questions in a principled way.”

Most of the other GOP presidential teams don’t have very large energy policy shops — if they exist at all.

Herman Cain’s campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment, and several GOP experts said they were in the dark on whom the former Godfather’s Pizza executive was leaning on for energy help beyond Americans for Prosperity, the tea party group affiliated with the Koch brothers.

“This may be a breaking news announcement for the media — I am the Koch brothers’ brother from another mother,” Cain said this month during an AFP-sponsored event in Washington.

Cain also was the only Republican to accept AFP’s invitation in June to attend a protest in Manhattan against the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative cap-and-trade program.

Supporters of Newt Gingrich said he’s got a barebones energy policy operation, which is only natural given that the former House speaker knows the issues cold. (He wrote a book on the subject and, in 2007, debated Democratic Sen. John Kerry on climate change.)

“I don’t know if he needs someone to tell him from soup to nuts what to think about it as far as energy production because he’s spent a lot of time thinking about it,” Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), a Gingrich backer, said in an interview.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s policy team is led by Mark McIntosh, a former Bush CEQ White House official. He’s also leaning on C. Boyden Gray, a former general counsel in George H.W. Bush’s White House.

Aside from Huntsman’s acknowledgment of climate science, the former Utah governor’s energy policy ideas are not much different from those of his GOP challengers. Several Republicans said the presidential candidates are all in the same place on the issues for a reason and that there’s no need for a major-league-size advising team until the general election campaign.

Said one former Bush EPA official, “The only thing you need to know about environmental issues to get through the Republican primary is that EPA is a job killer.”

Readers' Comments (19)

Romney is not the solution. We need thoughtful energy reform. Look, no one cares about the environment more than me. I want there to be a future for our children and grandchildren. However, we must stop sending billions of dollars yearly to our enemies. We have a chance to grow our economy by developing our energy sector. It won't all be clean, it won't always be pretty, but then again - it never has been. We have to make sacrifices if we want to see the future. You may think I'm crazy for backing Bachmann, but I truly in my heart believe she will lead us to energy independence. Here are a few issues Bachmann would tackle:

Just what we need--another term of Bushies stumbling around. Maybe THIS time they'll get around to open- ing ANWR for development. They had eight years before and couldn't seem to get 'er done. Obama would have simply issued an executive order and it would have been done.

So, a Romney Presidency is shaping up as a sort of third GW Bush term. More tax cuts, more deregulation and, oh yeah, a war with Iran that will send gasoline to 8 dollars a gallon and create a stagflation where prices will go higher but, wages will not. In short, the rich getting richer and the not rich, getting, not richer. It might be called, The Oligarchs Strike Back.

If the oil industry thought it could get Perry, no doubt they'd prefer a pure repeat of the Bush years - maybe they could even get Cheney to come back as VP again & tell Perry what to do - but since Perry is obviously not going to happen, they're putting their bets on the one who will actually get the Republican nomination.

And with Romney being so "adaptable", presumably they could get him to toe the Bush-Cheney-oil industry line pretty closely -- so, that's good enough for government work.

Just what we need is another 4 years of Bush Jr and another 4 years of getting screwed and seeing our energy policy dictated by politicians and bankers instead of the country and it's need's. Every time that Big Oil and Coal get ahold of the WH this country winds up with higher prices, a screwed up environment (Hey does anyone in Romney's camp really want to see who was responsible for the Deep Water permitting process and ensuing donkey kong festival ? This article has named at least 3 of them. You take advice from a screw-up, done be surprised if you get screwed yourself !) and a strangling of energy innovations. It took a Democratic Senate to get any number of tax-credit's approved for the use of solar, geothermal and wind energy program's. Now we are all supposed to rally around a candidate that wants to take us back to what we know is a losing proposition ? Romney needs to get his head ouuta his 4th point of contact and start looking at the energy policy shop and really ask those nasty questions such as 'Who's advice and position are you pushing ?" and ask who is paying their salary. The Presidency is supposed to be leading the country and looking out for the citizen's, not Big Business, Big Oil, Big Banks and the Financial Services industry. Get politics out of energy and open up the private sector, in cooperation with actual Gov't research, to innovate and we'll have the energy problem solved. But keep bringing in people who's only purpose is to corrupt and manipulate energy policy for the benefit of Wall St and all you're going to get is another Depp Water mess, or worse. And as far as the EPA is concerned, just look at the West Virginia probem with all of those coal ash 'dam's'. Anyone from West Virginia want to re-live Buffalo Creek ? Where's Manchin in this ? He wants an issue to campaign on, well, here it is. Time to 'pony up' Joe.

If Romney has 'a pair' it is now time to cinch'em up, saddle up and start chopping heads publicly and declare his energy policy for everyone to see. A transparent policy, and all it entails, is going to do him far more good than another secret policy group that gets him more publicity like what Clinton did with Hillary's Healthcare Working Group. The time for a declared policy, in all of his area's, is now. The longer he takes coming out, the worse it's gonna get. And at some point it's gonna run ouuta' gas. The big question Romney has to answer is simple. Where does he want to run out and in front of who ?

W. Bush proved to be one of our dirtier presidents by signing executive orders to bypass waste management modernization requirements. As governor, Bush policies soon made Texas one of our dirtier states and Houston the dirtiest city in the country. As president, he ordered regulatory bureaucrats to be lax in enforcement of protective laws. We saw the pollution rise. We saw beautiful public lands leased for oil development and timbering. We saw backward energy policies that catered to big oil companies and old energy-producing methods and old energy sources. These ex-Bush guys are only looking for a lucrative government job. After the damage they did to our water, land and air under W. Bush, Romney should stay far away from them. But since he's not, we should stay far away from Romney.

This is nothing but Republican fiction. A recent Department of Labor Statistics study found less than one percent (.3) of employers said they laid off workers last year because of regulations. Over 25% said it happened because of lack of business demand. We need to grow demand, not cut regulations that make life safer for all of US.

his foreign policy advisory team is a who's who of PNAC (Project for a New American Century) and former bush cheney "wars R us" cohorts

he now surrounds himself with more bush cheney cohorts on energy- i suppose he too will have a closed door energy summit like cheney's

how do we get fixed what's wrong if were gonna continue the same failed policies that got us here? obama is gonna have a field day with romney in the debates and should push to have as many as possible.

obviously romney is most concerned with just getting the nomination and not winning the general- endorsing privitization of medicare & SSI; doubling down with PNAC neocons (wonder if cain has gotten a clue yet?); rebooting cheney's secretive energy policy... that's certainly three strikes with mainstream voters.

niiiice, tying romney to bushoid is beautiful and it underscores romney's intent to continue with destroying our environment, slutting the president's chair to big oil, denying global warming, continuing with a policy of pollution at any cost, avoiding clean energy like the plague, enslaving americans to middle east political turmoil and stuffing romney's pockets with super PAC payola.

yup, you're right....bachmann will: * Cut federal regulations in order for super PACs to line her pockets with fossil fuel money, which will result in more damage the environment, contribute to global warming, result in the exploitation of our natural resources and more low paying jobs. * Increased domestic drilling which costs americans more every day in both the price at the pump and price of our children's future. it will pollute our environment and result in less innovation for sustainable energy in the future. BUT it will make your lazy ass feel better by allowing you to grow ever fatter sitting behind the wheel of your pollution belching ford that you bought thinking it was made in america.....dolt. * Promote Green energy production by doing what? please expand this ignorance, puppet.

poor Alexander Burns................a big Obama fan......... left out probably the most important piece of polling data in the CNN poll:

Registered Voters

Nov. 11-13, 2011

47%- Barack Obama

51% - Mitt Romney

enjoy it now- it's early. once voters get to focus on just obama & romney and romney has to explain his support for privitization, his neocon bouddies on foreign policy and huge giveaways to big oil he's gonna sink like a rock among mainstream voters... and lets not forget his little problem with southern voters/bible belt voters.

Is there anything more hypocritical than Obama constantly pointing to the GOP and their intransigence on his Jobs/Stimulus Bill, when Obama himself unilaterally declares a moratorium on TransCanada's Keystone XL Pipeline and squanders the 30,000 Jobs the project would produce.